“The Anglican Church is considering a gender-neutral God. May God forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Vladimir Putin, 21st February 2023
The sea of despondent people who listened to Putin's two-hour monologue in Moscow last week spoke volumes about the deep anxiety and shame that so many Russians feel about his assault on Ukraine in their name. It was a profoundly depressing start to events marking one year after his invasion, and particularly so because Putin, his hands dripping with Ukrainian and Russian blood, sought to justify his actions with a raft of dogma, including resorting to religion in order to preach male domination.
The concept of male headship finds its pre-historic origins in hunter-gatherer masculinity and millennia of tradition, and it is one of the most unpleasant traits of the human race. It is men, not women, who start wars, and the prisons are full of men, not women. It is a form of elitism which has no place in economic or social justice, and Putin's reference to the exclusively male character of God is not only insultingly presumptive but also illustrates the existential dangers with which it now threatens humanity.
Of course, historians will be able to identify a few belligerent women over the past millenia who have resorted to violence to achieve their aims; but not many, and it is hard to identify any modern-day autocracy where the reins are held by women. We don't often comment on gender in this commentary, but it's time to confront this relic of our pre-historic past.
Putin's resort to religion seeks to vest male headship in the nature of God, based on the Bible’s extensive use of the male pronoun (which only serves to illustrate the poverty of our language). It is, however, extraordinary that anyone should presume to know the nature of God: the only firm Biblical statement on this is in St. John's epistle where it states twice, very clearly, that ‘God is Love’.
Putin shares this view of male supremacy with his Iranian allies who have supplied him with attack drones, and whose own behaviour towards women is abhorrent, as we have seen over recent months. Thank goodness this is not the case in China, although there are some grounds for concern in a country where there are nearly 37 million more men than women, a consequence of the preference for sons under China's one-child policy, which was in place from 1979 to 2015.
However even the Church of England is not blameless in this regard: its spokesman said, in response to Putin's criticism: ‘There are absolutely no plans to consider a gender-neutral God’. Perhaps that helps to explain why the Church of England is losing its relevance so swiftly for most of the UK population.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece called ‘Love and the Individual’, which addresses many aspects of human and spiritual identity: [the link is in our description to this podcast and] the reference to gender identity is on page 3. My reasoning is based on both scripture and logic.
Churches of all kinds, Orthodox and Anglican Christianity and Islam, should remember that they are human vehicles whose task is to carry their faith forward for coming generations— they are not their faith themselves.
Let's return, however, to the supremist ideology on which ‘male headship’ rests. It is rooted in the same soil of elitism that gave rise to apartheid and national socialism, and which was used to justify slavery 200 years ago. For those who, like Thomas Jefferson, hold these truths to be self-evident — ‘that all are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ — elitism has no part to play in a world of economic and social justice, whether drawn on grounds of gender, race, nationality or anything else.
Many Russians profoundly understand this, and no doubt that's why it was forced deference and not willing support that kept most of Putin's despondent audience in place while he droned on last week.
As Ukraine starts on its second year of standing firm against his murderous assault, let's keep praying that the Russian Orthodox Church, whose Patriarch Kirill was clearly evident in that audience, comes to realise the error of their ways: something for which we argued on 11th April last year.
Once Churches understand what is meant by St. John’s teaching that ‘God is Love’, they will also appreciate that gender dominance and national hatred can have no part in divine purpose.
Gavin Oldham OBE
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